Cultural left assaults Star Wars
By C.T. Rossi
web posted May 27, 2002
Like one of his embattled Jedi characters, movie magician
George Lucas is under assault. Film critics and academics, like
legions of post-modern clone-troopers, are assaulting the
filmmaker for creating what they view as a politically incorrect
vision in his latest movie, Attack of the Clones.
While it is easier to mistake the diminutive Yoda for gargantuan
Jabba the Hutt than to mistake the flannel shirt- and blue jean-
clad Lucas for a political conservative, the creator of the Star
Wars franchise is drawing the same type of rhetorical fire usually
reserved for members of the John Birch Society.
A common thread in most of the attacks is the charge that Lucas
is socially and artistically in retrograde - stuck in the '30s,'40s or
'50s. It is very telling that while some may not approve of his art
moderne style spaceships, more are fixated on Lucas' sexual
mores. Note how Village Voice critic Michael Atkinson launches
into his scathing review as he writes: "To answer the most
pressing question first: Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen),
now a teenager on his way to becoming Darth Vader, does not
do erstwhile princess/present senator Amidala (Natalie Portman)
. . .". Atkinson further derides the movie as "irrelevant
preadolescent dreaming" in a review which seems consumed
with an unfulfilled sexual appetite.
In a similar vein, Salon.com launches a telling stricture against the
movie, "George Lucas is still a virgin, and he wants his audience
in the same stricken state." The critic, David Thompson, mocks
the on-screen love affair as "early '50s" where the love-struck
protagonists "start talking about love and marriage - those classic
parental alternatives to desire and pleasure." Love and marriage?
How passe those concepts must appear to the enlightened Left
at Salon. To them Lucas is once again portrayed as a man
whose vision is trapped in the "dreams and longings of young
people in their era of prepubescence."
When not being lambasted for Victorian prudery, Lucas is
dodging accusations of racism. Utilizing a stretch of the
imagination that would leave X-Files fans incredulous, Wayne
State University history professor Jose Cuella is hypothesizing
that Lucas has it in for Latinos. Cuella's theory rests on the
premise that the character Jango Fett is the allegorical
representation of Hispanics in Lucas' myth-based world. The
only problem is that Fett is played by Temuera Morrison, a New
Zealander of Maori descent. This, ironically, places Cuella in the
same camp as white racists who see all dark-skinned people as
some monolithic threat. Mexican or Maori really doesn't seem
matter when you are trying to expose The Great White Lucas
Conspiracy. Interestingly enough, Jose Cuella also notes that he
thinks that Attack of the Clones is like "those Reagan ads in the
1980 campaign that suggested if Nicaragua went communist,
you'd have wild-eyed Mexicans with guns running across the
California border." This is of interest because the attacks on
Lucas do show a similarity to those launched by Reagan's critics.
Reagan was painted by opponents as a political dinosaur
trapped in a Cold War 1950s world. He was also called a racist.
But the most frequent charge was that Reagan was an intellectual
lightweight. Lucas faces the same charge.
Critic Rick Groen of the Toronto Globe and Mail makes Lucas-
bashing a North American venture as he warns with true haughty
elitism that you should not turn to Lucas "if you happen to belong
to that tiny minority whose idea of fun . . . lies in a story with
depth and characters with complexity and a theme with meaning
. . .". Not to be outdone in snobbery, the New York Times
review penned by A. O. Scott suggests that "the American
moviegoing public will line up out of habit and compulsion . . .".
True to form, when the unwashed masses deviate from the tastes
of elite media (the supposed champions of people) they are
branded as lemmings. The masses are counted as besotted when
they vote for Reagan or listen to conservative talk radio, but
have them vote for Bill Clinton and they become an enlightened
Rousseauan commonweal lending its mandate to the great
philosopher-king.
While being politically left-leaning, George Lucas is learning
firsthand the secret power behind the dark side of liberals - envy.
Lucas has grown too successful not to be a target for the politics
of envy. Once a brash upstart young director, he defied studio
norms and conventions to create Star Wars. But now, after a
series of hit movies, an empire of successful spin-off companies
and a legion of devoted followers, Lucas has become just
another middle-aged, rich, white-man enemy
C.T. Rossi writes on contemporary culture for the Free
Congress Foundation (http://www.freecongress.org).
Enter Stage Right - http://www.enterstageright.com